Adventures of a Couch Potato

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Julie’s Going Away Party and KL

Last weekend we had a little get together for one of my colleagues, who got a job offer to teach in Thailand. The following day, I flew to Kuala Lumpur to pick up the Panasonic Lumix GH3, which will probably be my replacement camera for the Panasonic TM900 I’ve been using for the past year or so. It’s pretty much completely customizable and the MOV files can be imported directly into Final Cut Pro and edited on the spot. With the Panasonic, I had to first rewrap and transcode the files, which usually took several hours and lots of processing power. I purchased the Lumix at YL camera, which is supposed to be one of the best shops in Malaysia. Even with the airfare, I was able to buy the camera for less than it would have cost me back in the States. The only drawback is that, being a PAL version, it can only record up to 30 minutes of video, but there are few occasions when I would actually be shooting a take that long. I’d read numerous complaints about the camera prior to buying it – users have reported problems with the clarity of the EVF, the camera settings displayed on the monitor disappear after 10 seconds and it doesn’t have focus peaking or zebras – quibbles that I find are greatly exaggerated. Some have even gone so far as to say that the camera is too large, but if anything, I think it is still too small! My next purchase might be the Voigtlander 17.5mm f/0.95 lens or even the Black Magic Pocket Cinema camera, which is supposed to come out at the end of the month.